page_title: Rappahannock River
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Rappahannock River / History
caption_attribution_description: Fredericksburg, Va. View of town from east bank of the Rappahannock]. Photograph from the main eastern theater of the war, Burnside and Hooker, November 1862-April 1863.
context_page_description: The Rappahannock River is a river in eastern Virginia, in the United States. It is about 195 miles in length. It crosses the entire northern part of the state, from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the west, across the Piedmont, to the Chesapeake Bay, south of the Potomac River. The river drains an area of 2,848 square miles which is about 6% of Virginia. Much of the watershed is rural and forested. But it has experienced increased development in recent decades because it is so close to the Washington, D.C. suburbs.
  It was an important river in American history. The Rappahannock was the site of early settlements in the Virginia Colony. Later, it was at the center of Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was a significant obstacle to north-south movements via land. As a result it functioned as the war's eastern-theatre boundary, between the "North" and the "South".
context_section_description: The name of the river comes from an Algonquian word, lappihanne (also recorded as toppehannock), meaning "river of quick, rising water" or "where the tide ebbs and flows," the name used by the local native population, the Rappahannock tribe.
  Although there had been a few small hamlets along the lower Rappahannock during early colonial times, the settlement of the Rappahannock River valley began in earnest during the first years of the 18th century, at the urging of Governor Alexander Spotswood. The James River had been surveyed up to its fall line, the point where, geologically, continental bedrock of the Piedmont meets the sedimentary rocks and alluvial soils of the coastal plain.  Spotswood encouraged settlement in a river valley other than that of the James.  In 1714, he began seeking immigrants from the Rhineland-Palatinate and Switzerland to homestead on lands he controlled near where the Rappahannock and the Rapidan came together.  Known as the Germanna settlement(s), these villages were founded in order to exploit the iron ore deposits of the region.
  The Battle of Rappahannock River was fought on the river during the War of 1812. Seventeen British boats filled with hundreds of marines and sailors captured four American privateers.
  During the American Civil War, the river, with few convenient fords and fewer bridges, provided a barrier and defensive line. Behind this line troops had little fear of attack from the river-side. It was an especially difficult barrier for Union troops to overcome in their attempts to thrust into southern Virginia. Control of the river changed hands many times during the course of the war. Significant battles fought along the river include the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Rappahannock Station.  The defensive line at the river was finally bypassed by Ulysses S. Grant in the Wilderness (or Overland) Campaign of 1864, ending in the ultimate Union victory.
  In some 18th- and 19th-century documents, including some Civil War records, the Rappahannock River was referred to as "Hedgeman's River" A 1736-1737 survey labeled the Rappahannock above the mouth of the Rapidan as "Cannon", and further upstream it was identified as "Hedgeman's River," named after Nathaniel Hedgeman, an early settler of the region.
caption: Fredericksburg, Virginia, March 1863. View from across the Rappahannock River.
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